by Evans, Misty
His touch was warm and familiar, but a cold tendril of magic stung my skin where his fingers encircled my wrist. A cold magic that skimmed my system, slamming up against my own magic and rattling down my spine.
I knew that type of cold. Angelic.
I jerked my arm from his grasp and backed up. “What kind of game are you playing with Gabriel?”
Eve stepped forward, backing me up against the wall. “Like Adam said, you need to come with us.”
She and Adam reached for my wrists at the same time. My magic hissed. I flailed my arms and tried to push them aside. Where their hands touched my bare skin, magic sizzled and sunk into me with sharp teeth.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Keisha, seeing my distress, rushed forward. “Let go of her.”
But it was too late. The magic Gabriel had infused Adam and Eve with bit down hard, sinking its cold fury into my bones. The room spun and my head grew too heavy to hold up.
The thumpthumpthump of the bass blocked out Keisha’s voice, the noises in the room blurring into one loud buzz. Adam’s face morphed into Gabriel’s and Eve’s mutated as well, transforming into a cat’s face. Her eyes slanted at an angle, and as she smiled, her teeth pointed.
I closed my eyes, sucked in a breath and mentally reached for the Mark. In the back of my mind, I noted I had become entirely too dependent on the damn thing.
So be it. Adam and Eve were up to no good and had a powerful archangel backing them. Since this involved me, it could only be bad. Plus, Zayfeer was waiting for me, Luc was a no-show and Cephiel was gone.
Think, Amy. What would Oprah do?
Somehow I didn’t think the O would know what to do in this situation either. This was all on me.
My magic was ready and willing, cha-chaing inside my chest. But no. I wasn’t going to use it. I could think my way out of this. All I had to do was…
Repel.
Whoops.
A rush of hot magic whooshed up from the soles of my feet. It throttled through me like a freight train, causing my back to arch. A yell issued from my mouth as I threw back my head.
A giant circle of energy rolled out of my body, then another. They came in waves, keeping time with the music. Bam…bam…bam, the power circles punched out of me, a magical tsunami knocking Adam, Eve, Keisha and the rest of the partygoers out of the way. Those nearest me flew through the air like dolls smacking into those behind them. Chairs flew, knickknacks were crushed. Bodies tumbled and fell.
Yeah, definitely not my best Oprah imitation.
My body threw out one last circle before it spasmed and I slid down the wall. Disoriented and sick to my stomach, I shut my eyes tight and clamped my jaws together. One second. I just needed a second to regroup and…
Hands, cold as ice and throwing off angelic mojo, grabbed me. The magic was in sharp contrast to mine and my body spasmed again as if an electrical current had zapped me.
Blinking hard, I tried to focus on who was gripping my arms, but my head was woozy and my eyes wouldn’t focus. I didn’t need to see. The angel magic biting into my flesh and bones once more told me all I needed to know.
“You can’t stop what’s coming,” Gabriel said. He started to lift me off the floor. “You’re coming with us.”
Eve’s low voice, radiating superiority and the same smugness Zayfeer’s usually did, echoed inside my head. She was out of breath, but seemed almost high on my power. “It’s time.”
Another set of hands clamped onto me, lifting my legs. Adam’s.
I choked back the fear and hate tangling together in my throat. Luc, my mind called. Where the hell are you?
My magic reached out searching for him, and the Mark of Cain, annoyingly quiet until that moment, seared to life on my forehead.
Chapter Eighteen – The Axeman and the Afterlife
Adam’s eyes widened as realization dawned. At the same moment, Gabriel dropped me, taking wing.
Too late. As I hit the floor, the Mark of Cain flashed its white light, searing my vision. My magic detonated a second time, the force so violent, it lifted me from the ground.
I hovered, limbs rigid. My brain blanked out like a television signal lost. Still online, but nothing coming through.
Around me, all noise ceased and my senses went on lockdown. I opened my mouth to call out to Keisha or Emilia or anyone who could hear me, but my vocal chords were frozen.
Icy air skittered over my skin. Then I was falling…a straight shot to the ground. I landed hard a second time, gasping at a sharp pain in my ribs as I bounced with the aplomb of a basketball and tumbled once, twice, three times.
Something that tasted like dirt got in my mouth. I coughed and spit it out as I finally came to a stop. For a couple of long seconds, I didn’t move, just laid on my stomach, catching my breath. All was quiet, except for the slight ringing in my ears.
The quiet was peaceful, but wrong. I leveraged my body into a sitting position and braced myself with my hands. My vision swam and I had to close my eyes, keep them closed for a minute, and then try again.
There. I could focus. Sort of. Was that green stuff grass?
The white light was gone. So was the party and Keisha’s house. My shirt and pants hung in shreds and my brain swam in a pool of murky thoughts. Even my magic struggled to come online after such a hard reboot.
Lifting my gaze from the ground, I found an intimidating forest stretched out in front of me. Bulbous thunderheads darkened the sky above.
“Noooo,” I moaned. I was back in purgatory. How had that happened? “No, no, no!”
I struggled to my feet, legs shaking, and raised a fist to the heavens. “Not fair,” I shouted. “I didn’t even get to have sex this time!”
In response, lightning danced over the tops of the trees. Almost playful like.
One tree in the center towered over the others, its trunk thick and solid as a castle turret. The trunk was gray with age and the bark twisted and braided its way to the top. The branches reached skyward, strong and mostly devoid of leaves. Their skeletal limbs rustled and poked out irreverently, skewing the heavens.
Wind whooshed around the tree in a spiral, making several of the remaining leaves break off and ride the wind’s helix down to the underlying canopy.
For a moment, it looked like the tree was waving to me, even as it shed tears made of leaves. Was God having a good laugh at my expense?
Go ahead and laugh, I challenged him. But one of these days…
The thought went nowhere. One of these days, what, Amy? You and God going to go mano-a-mano?
Ridiculous, of course, but I’d gotten out of this purgatory nightmare before. I’d do it again.
Summoning my magic, I glared at the heavens and dared them to stop me. I thought about my apartment, my friends, my determination to stop Zayfeer.
Back.
I waited for the sucking sensation indicating I was headed for the land of the living. No rush of magic. No movement of any kind.
Return!
Nada. Maybe this new one-word incantation wasn’t as effective as I thought.
The wind continued rushing through the trees in bursts that sounded like faint laughter. Flickers of lightning cavorted in the clouds. I sat on the piney-smelling ground and hugged my knees. Why did I keep ending up in purgatory? Was my magic backfiring or was it that stupid Mark of Cain?
Maybe this time it had been Gabriel’s magic.
Or God really was laughing at my expense.
God sends you challenges to teach you a lesson, Cephiel’s voice rang in my head. How many times had he used that as an excuse to try and change me?
The surrounding area grew darker as I pondered my predicament. Maybe I’d simply had a psychotic break. Sounded reasonable.
The forest seemed to breathe as it waited for me to do something. Goose bumps rose on my skin and my stomach tensed. The eerie weight of eyeballs watching me made me shiver. Call it instinct or whatever you like, but something told me to run. The forest was alive and it
wanted me.
Do NOT go into the scary forest, Amy.
I stood. There was no church in sight. No downtown Eden with empty buildings. Just me, the forest and the fog from earlier, curling around behind me, thick as mud.
Turning my back on the forest, I walked into the fog just to see what would happen. Not that I wanted to get lost in a swampy fog where Freddie or Jason might be lurking, but I’d take Hollywood movie monsters over whatever waited for me in that forest.
The fog closed around me, a cold, heavy blanket, and two feet in, I hit an invisible wall.
I cursed, kicked the wall a few times and finally laid my forehead against it, my determination hitting a matching figurative wall. Was this really it? The forest or nothing?
Returning to the edge of the woods, I shut down the mental histrionics. Time to face the music. Or whatever it was waiting for me in that forest.
Wait. Maybe my magic no longer worked to get me out of purgatory, but could it work to bring someone in?
Closing my eyes, I pulled up my favorite mental image of Luc. We were in Paris, holed up in a flat with a view of the Seine, decadent food and wine in abundance, a claw foot tub and a bed that took up the entire living area. Every night, we fed each other chocolate-covered strawberries, and like a modern day Scheherazade, I made up wild stories about couture-dressed witches seducing fallen angels.
Every tale was a tale of seduction, magic and love, with a side of humor that made Luc laugh. I loved to make him laugh. Loved the expression on his face when he did so.
That’s the image I called up now.
Lucifer.
I kept my eyes closed and my mind focused, ignoring the creepy sensations emanating from the trees and the sense of hopelessness taking root inside my chest.
Work, dammit.
A scuffling noise came from the forest. Cracking open one eye, I peered into the dark recesses. “Luc?”
A flash of white teeth appeared, then a growl. Uh, oh. I knew that growl...
Hell hound.
I froze…a rabbit, hoping to go unnoticed by the big, bad wolf.
A bulky Rottweiler stepped from the shadow of the trees. Her teeth were bared, fangs ready to rip me to shreds. But when she saw me, her dark eyes softened. “Dude. I’ve been looking all over for you. What the hell are you doing here?”
Yep, the Hell hound was talking to me. “Nikita?”
She trotted over, cocked her giant boxy head. “Purgatory, huh?” She swung that head to look over the landscape, panted a couple of times. “You don’t have much of an imagination, do you?”
“You’re criticizing my version of limbo?”
“You gotta admit, it ain’t much.”
Nikita had been one of Lilith’s assassins, bent on taking me to Hell. The hound had wormed her way into my life as a loyal pet, then stabbed me in the back—or bit me in the leg, as the case was—and killed me.
Is it any wonder why I’m a cat person?
When I turned the tables on Lilith and Gabriel raised me from Hell, the queen of demons was so mad, she kicked Nikita out of Hell and cursed the assassin to forever stay in dog form.
Nikita, in turn, became pissed at me and tried to take up residence at my apartment. I’d managed to shove her off on Cephiel and now enjoyed the irony of a Hell hound becoming Immaculate Conception’s mascot while driving my guardian angel batty.
Who says there’s no justice in the world?
“Why are you here?” I asked, keeping an eye on the woods behind her.
“Lucifer sent me. He’d come himself, but he’s lost his magic.”
Lost his…“Say again?”
Nikita licked her lips, panted. “He didn’t realize it was gone until he tried to shimmer to Keisha’s party. He thinks it happened after you two did the horizontal hula, and he’s never had his powers go belly-up before, so he’s at a loss as to how to get them back.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She gave me a look that said I don’t kid. “He can’t help you get out of here.”
I rubbed my eyes and blew out a tired sigh. Was it my fault Luc had lost his powers? It was one thing to have magic and choose not to use it, another to have it taken from you. “So he sent you to help me?”
“Don’t sound so dubious.” She grinned, showing her teeth. “I don’t bite.”
“You tricked me, killed me and took me to Hell a few months ago at Lilith’s request. By biting me. Trusting you is like playing with a stick of dynamite.”
In the forest, a shadow moved. A big shadow. Not archangel big, but definitely scary-monster big. Vicious footsteps crashed through the undergrowth and we heard what sounded like a heavy weight being dragged across the forest floor.
Nikita shifted her beefy paws. “Doesn’t look like you have a lot of options.”
Whatever was being dragged on the ground scraped against a tree. Metal clanged. There was a splitting noise, and deep inside the forest, a tree shuddered. The tall tree. A couple more of its leaves broke away and fell in a death spiral to the ground.
Inside my chest, my heart tried to break free. A burst of white hot pain shot through my upper body.
“Unless,” Nikita added, “you’re into that whole Axeman/Resident Evil thing.”
Oh, no. Keisha had made me watch those movies over and over. Every time, I freaked out more about the Axeman than the zombies.
“And me without my gun loaded with coins.”
Nikita grinned. “Who needs coins? You’ve got me.”
I rubbed my chest where the burning sensation hovered around my magic. “Right. I feel so much better.” Not.
Another scrap, another clang, another strike against the tall tree. A collective moan went up from the trees and pain burst again inside my chest. Nikita and I stepped backwards into the fog, hit the invisible wall.
I wiped a bead of sweat off my forehead. “Why is it chopping down the tree?”
“My guess? The trees represent the souls you sold to the Devil. Axeman is a reaper. He’s sending that soul to Hell.”
Through the fog, I studied the tree, my heart beating a painful rhythm. Was the tree reaching toward me? It looked so…sad.
I was definitely losing it. “How do we stop him?”
“The Axeman? Hell if I know.”
“I’m so glad Luc sent you of all people—er, creatures. You’re such a big help.”
“Kidding, kidding. As you well know, I happen to be an expert on taking souls to Hell. You can’t stop a reaper from collecting a soul. What you can do is make a trade.”
“Trade one soul for another?”
“Exactly.”
“But I don’t have a soul to trade.”
“You have yours.”
Silence…from the forest and from my magic.
The pain continued burning in my chest but a hollowness set up shop next to it. “So this is all a trick to get me to give my soul to Lucifer again.”
“It’s not a trick. I’m telling you, if you want to save that soul from Hell, you have to give the reaper a soul in exchange. It’s just how things work.”
Axeman struck the tree another blow and one of the remaining leaves fell. A cry went up; the wind screaming through the trees and bending their branches.
Or maybe the trees themselves were screaming.
I slapped my hands over my ears. My knees went out and I slid down the invisible wall of fog to land hard on my butt.
At one time, my soul had been split in two. Lucifer owned half and Gabriel the other half. It hadn’t been easy to rejoin them, but I’d struck a deal with God and both halves were mine now. My fate was my own. I controlled my destiny.
At least in theory.
Images of the people I’d brokered deals for were cataloged deep in my brain behind a door I never opened.
But that tree wasn’t just any soul. My brain knew it, my magic and my heart did as well. The idea of going to Hell in place of that soul made my stomach heave, but for reasons I didn’t understand, I had
to save that tree. Had to save that soul.
“Fine,” I whispered, my breath hitching but my resolve strong. “I give my soul as trade.”
Chapter Nineteen – A Walk In the Dark
“Hold on, there, Broker.” Zayfeer emerged from the fog. “Let’s not be rash.”
The wind died, and with it, the screaming.
Slowly, I removed my hands from my ears. “You.”
Pushing to my feet, I got in his face and shook a finger at him. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”
My legs wobbled and my feet couldn’t seem to stick to the ground, pitching me forward. He grabbed my arms just before I face-planted into his chest. “I had nothing to do with designing this…this…” He paused and glanced at the forest. “Poor excuse for purgatory.”
Everyone’s a critic. I clenched my fists. “What are you doing here, then?”
His gaze probed mine. “You can’t trade your soul for that one.”
“Why not?”
He glanced away. “That one’s…nonnegotiable. The terms are written in stone.”
Nikita’s brown eyebrows shot up. “Oh. My. God. That soul is…?”
She left the question hanging and Z gave her a terse nod.
The queasiness in my stomach pushed up toward my throat. I opened the mental door so I could flip through the images in my brain. Nine-hundred ninety-nine souls.
But this one was special.
The deal, nonnegotiable.
Whatever was obvious to the Hell hound was not to me. None of the people cataloged in my brain stood out as any different than the others. “Whose soul is it?”
Zayfeer shifted his weight, but met my eyes. “Think, witch. The first soul you ever took for Lucifer.”
The first soul I took for Luc belonged to a black rapper who was now happily ensconced in fame, fortune and mega-stardom. “Frosty A? What’s special about his soul?”
Zayfeer rubbed his eyes, let out an impatient sigh. “Not the Frost Man. Your first soul.”
“He was my first soul.”
“You’ll have to tell her,” Nikita said. “She doesn’t remember.”
